


stay safe

by Saul



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Also: Murder, Gen, Spooky Camping Story, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7308268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saul/pseuds/Saul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Neil Josten hasn't met the Foxes, otherworldly forces bring them together. </p>
<p>One of those forces is a mandated camping trip from Coach Wymack. Another remains a bit harder to swallow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stay safe

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the character death warning. ):
> 
> Written for [alondurr](http://alondurr.tumblr.com/)'s prompt of: a tfc!thriller au.

During a Wymack-mandated camping trip during a late but pleasantly cool fall weekend, it was only after they pitched their tents in a crude triangle and started a crackling fire that they looked up at the night sky to catch sight of a blood-red harvest moon hanging heavy and bright over their heads. 

_Think Coach set us up for a horror movie?_  Nicky had joked, a chilly wind rustling the branches overhead.

_Dude,_ Matt replied, _don’t joke. You’re half Mexican **and** gay. You’re doomed._

_But you and Dan are the jock couple,_  he returned. _I’ll rest easy knowing you two went down first after you decided to make-out naked in a bush._

_Hey, that doesn’t sound like an awful way to go._

_Yeah, if you ignore the bugs._

_Please,_  Dan cut in. _Allison’s obviously going to seduce Matt and get offed in my place. It’ll be a lesson in morali–_

Their poorly built fire had withered in the wind, but all at once, it flared high enough to engulf a person. Nicky and Matt jumped with a curse; the rest sat up straighter, even those (that is: Kevin and Andrew, who didn’t even want to be on the camping trip) who had been turning in early freezing to watch. 

High enough to burn a human was big enough to contain a human, and in the flames was _definitely_ a figure. It reached to them with one smoky hand, its mouth and eyes sunken black holes, and then, just as quick as it came, it left, the fire collapsing back to its sputtering embers.

Nicky and Matt’s scream echoed into the silence after it.

That had been the start of their haunted weekend. After the dramatic entrance, the figure reappeared as white wisps behind shadowed trees and a blur in the corner of the eye, goosebumps and chills always left in its wake. After a full day of various teammates catching glimpses of it, Dan put her foot down and said they were packing up. Renee argued that it seemed to want them to do something, and that it didn’t appear harmful. 

Nicky, nerves frayed, pointed out that was _exactly_ how people ended up murdered in horror movies.

In the end, they struck a deal: they’d move _as a group_ in the direction it always appeared in (and it always did appear toward the west. they’d pieced together that much), and if things got fishy, they were going. Immediately. It was a decision made with a mix of youthful invincibility, a desire to not be seen as the coward, and two cases of shitty, cheap beer.

And that was how they’d ended up tramping through dense woods into the late evening, phone flashlights out and one camping lantern (another Wymack-mandated item) lighting their way. They moved as a loud, clumsy, clumped mass, stomping saplings flat and tripping equally over roots and each other’s feet. As they moved in a windy western line, the creepy wisp gained mass: it still remained out of reach and almost out of sight, but it’d gained distinctive features.

“It’s some chick,” Matt declared an hour into their impromptu hike. “She’s leading us to her grave, or something, for final respects.”

“If she’s a chick, she’s got no ass,” Seth threw back. 

“Be nice! She’s dead.”

“Is that,” Renee gently interrupted, “a shack?”

Dan hoisted the lantern higher. 

It was a shack.

Emphasis on the past tense: it _had been_ a shack. Now, it barely qualified as four walls, its doorway broken and roof partially collapsed in. Vines endeavored to bring it down within the decade, and weeds grew high around its property. Blood smeared the door’s siding, as if something had grabbed on for support and then let go.

The group fell silent. In their quiet, they all wondered whether or not a debilitated and haunted shack qualified as creepy enough to call the search off.

It was one thing to follow a feeling. It was another to acknowledge something like a ghost had led them here.

But then Aaron, annoyed at having come so far only to turn back (and far beyond tipsy, even an hour later), broke rank and strode forward. Nicky scrambled to follow, though he looked like he wanted to do anything but. Andrew caught up with his twin within moments, drawing even with him as they rounded to peer through the doorway.

Even a number of paces back, everyone caught Aaron’s bit-off curse. 

They surged forward en masse after Nicky clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. Before they reached the shack, Andrew had moved from the doorway to the figure within. 

Once she saw what the cousins did, Dan pushed down nausea and wheeled on Allison. “You get reception out here?” 

Allison was already on it.

“Police? I’d like to report a murder–”

“– Attempted murder,” Aaron corrected from inside the shack, crouched next to his twin with his hand at the bloody teen’s neck. “He’s still alive.”

“Holy shit,” Matt breathed.

“We need an ambulance,” Allison corrected herself, voice clipped, “immediately.”

In the woods, a branch broke. More than half of them jumped. Renee’s eyes flitted between them, her calm unshakable even as she said, “Everyone’s accounted for.” 

“Don’t–” Dan whispered.

Renee finished, almost apologetic, “Except for whoever did this.”

“Oh, god,” Nicky moaned. “No, no, this had to be a bear. _That_ had to be a bear. I’d take a bear.”

Another branch snapped, and man-made light cut through the trees around them. Distinctly human voices followed, their tones on the ugly side of unhappy.

Everyone crowded into the shack without hesitation, breathing room afforded only to the auburn-haired and unconscious youth in a corner.

“I don’t know our exact location,” Allison said, knuckles white around her phone but voice kept strictly, terribly level, “but we need help. _Now._ ”

* * *

Voice shaking and low, barely audible: “Allison? How’s your phone?” 

The reply, just as low and so taut it might as well shake: “No signal.”

“We’re going to die,” another voice chimed in, shaking the worst of them all. “We split up. We’re fucked.”

They had split up.

The men tramping through the forests were keen on killing, if not all of them, at least those who got between them and the unconscious boy slung over Matt’s back. When the voices had neared the shack, their violent intentions had been clear; the Foxes had taken one glance at each other and one at the boy and, when Allsion hissed _hello? hello? are you still there? – fuck_ , decided to book it out of the enclosed space. They hadn’t been thinking, they’d barely remembered to grab the boy,  and they’d splintered into smaller groups to better wind through the trees.

Matt, Allison, Nicky and Dan made up one group. They agreed they’d seen the twins with Renee, and Nicky emphasized that Andrew wouldn’t have left Kevin. Seth was a big question mark: one moment he’d been at Allison’s heels, and the next, he’d disappeared. Hidden in a natural, damp and shallow cave in the side of a hill they’d practically fallen down (Dan had droped her lantern after tripping on a root, and after finding the cave, they’d thereafter agreed to turn off phone lights in case their mystery pursuers were closer than expected), the group wrestled with barely restrained panic. Every creaking tree became an hulking man with a knife; every animal shuffling around became an enemy ready to fill them with lead; even an owl’s low hooting made them crowd further into the grimy cave.

“Where’s that fucking ghost?” Nicky asked, jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering. “Can’t she lead us to safety? Doesn’t she get that this kid is going to die if we do?”

“You just had to bring up horror movies,” Dan hissed at him. “Look at us. We’re your fucking named group. You jinxed us.”

“Life is not Hollywood!” Nicky yelped.

Allison snarled for them to shut up, waving her phone at Dan to show her a potential signal, but it was too late. The silence after Nicky’s exclamation wasn’t as silent as it had been. It took Matt a moment to place what was wrong, dread building before confusion abated as he realized: the owl was gone.

He cursed. Then he said, “Guys? We have t–”

Light cracked, and Allison screamed.

No. Dan tripped forward, and then Allison screamed as Dan stumbled into her. Something was wrong with her head, something was–

A shaking Nicky crowded into Matt’s space and shoved him out, _out,_  told him Dan would be fine, Allison would get her, they needed to go, they had to go, the kid on Matt’s back was going to die if they didn’t move.

We’re going to die, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t breathe around what his eyes insisted he saw and what his brain told him would never be true, and listening to Nicky was easier than anything else. They crashed through the trees with all the subtly of drunken bears, not tripping by sheer speed and dedication. Behind them crashed another body, or two, or three. Matt felt light as a leaf. He could run forever. The kid weighed next to nothing, and Nicky was an easy target to follow.

And then Nicky was gone. 

There, then gone. Just like Seth.

Matt tried to pull up, gasped, “Nicky?” but inertia wasn’t so willing to listen and, in two more steps, his foot met air and he, too, crashed down into darkness. 

The boy slipped from his back and landed with a quiet thud at his side. The ground was soft, damp and mossy, but still ground: hitting it knocked the wind out of him, his teeth biting into his tongue hard enough to draw blood. Part of the reason, he found, was because he’d landed on Nicky’s legs. 

Wheezing, he rolled away. Then he held his breath as best as he could, choking down the cough that begged release: overhead, tramping feet came up to the ravine and stopped. Another pair joined it. 

_Allison?_ Matt almosted asked. _Dan?_

But it couldn’t be. He knew and didn’t know that it couldn’t possibly be them both.

At his side, Nicky groaned, the sound low and pained. 

A light clicked on. Matt covered his eyes, spots dancing in the blinding glow. The person tsked, something metal rattling, and a deafening crack once again cut through the still air.

The bullet grazed Matt’s shoulder, stinging pain left in its wake. Overhead, the figure pitched to the side, someone smaller smashing into it and knocking them both to the ground. The figure’s companion pulled up a gun and managed a shot before another person – a girl, definitely a girl, white haired, _Renee_ \- crashed into them. The light the first held tumbled into the muddy ravine; Matt scrambled for it, his coughing fit at last released.

From his vantage point, Matt had no idea what the struggling entailed. He did, with trembling hands and a quick check, know Nicky was alive but wavering in and out of consciousness, a gash on his head explaining the foggy sheen over his cracked-open eyes. After giving Nicky a relieved pat ( _better than it could have been_ , he thought, and wondered where the thought came from) and backing up, Matt also learned the bloody boy somehow, incredibly, continued to breathe.

“Stubborn bastard,” Matt whispered, and gave him a relieved pat on the shoulder, too.

The brawl overhead quieted in two sharp cracks, one by gun and one by a heavy head meeting something heavier. Matt looked up with the flashlight, unable to keep his breathing under control this time around.

Renee popped her head over the side and squinted in the light. Matt, apologetic, lowered it from her eyes.

“It’s alright,” she said, strangely detached. “These two are the last. We saw Allison and Dan.”

Matt didn’t know what to do with her tone or word choice. He asked, “What about Seth?” 

Renee shook her head. Then, “What about Kevin?”

“We,” Matt had to swallow, his throat wasn’t working right, “thought he was with you.”

Renee glanced back to whoever else was there. A Minyard, Matt’s distant process of elimination informed him. It had to be Andrew. Aaron would never. Aaron was better at keeping his cool and hiding. Andrew had knives. That probably came in handy.

“I don’t know if I can stand up right now,” Matt confessed to no one in particular.

Renee refocused on him in a flash. “Are your legs okay?”

His ankle hurt, he supposed. Maybe.

“I think so,” he decided.

“Shock,” he heard her tell Andrew. “He’s in shock. Nicky looks concussed. I can’t tell with the one we found. Aaron, can you–? Thanks.” A beat. “Andrew, you won’t find him in the dark.” Another pause. Rustling, footsteps. Matt blinked slowly, the flashlight’s harsh glow turning a beetle’s shadow into a stretched-out nightmare. “Alright. Try the shack.”

Andrew left.

Aaron hopped down into the ravine and helped Matt up. Together, Renee pulling from the top - Matt’s ankle hurt a lot more once he was standing, but he didn’t think about it, the whole night white static - they hefted Nicky, and then the boy. 

Renee sat at Matt’s side with an arm around his shoulders and told him to stretch out his leg.  She also kept Nicky from stumbling back into the ravin. The boy, of course, didn’t budge. Aaron, maybe a little desperate, climbed a tree to try for better reception.

It took him ages, but he eventually caught a signal and dialed the police.

Andrew returned with Kevin, unconscious, on his back. He left a big, glistening imprint on the back of Andrew’s shirt when Andrew propped him against a tree, but Andrew kept a hand pressed to the bloody hole in his side and, as of the police at last arriving, he continued to both breathe and bleed.

They hurried Kevin, Nicky and the boy away on stretchers, but they had no hope of keeping any of them away from one another. They told the police that the boy had joined them in the beginning at the campfire, he was a friend from out of town, the first one to be abducted from their site by those dead bodies, a tale Renee wove and the police bought.

There were only six of them left. They had to stick together.

* * *

Aaron woke to a hand at his shoulder, jolting him out of unconsciousness and back into the disinfectant-coated reality of a hospital’s waiting room. Backing off to give him space, Renee’s mouth curved up into a lopsided smile as she said, “They say we can see him now.”

Aaron squinted at her.

“Jake,” she said. 

“Jake,” he replied. It took a moment for drowsiness to abate and the connection to work; once it did, however, he joined Nicky and his brother at the door in a heartbeat. For the first day the police had kept Aaron, Andrew and Renee detained for questioning, but after a night’s rest (and Matt’s and Kevin’s operations and Nicky’s release and, worst, Wymack’s phone call), they’d agreed to return to the hospital.

They’d sat in the waiting room for close to eight hours. Renee pulled at the secretaries’ heartstrings when they were told they had to leave and managed to keep the ragged Foxes poised to visit their critically conditioned friends within a moment’s notice. She was very, very convincing. It would’ve been scarier if Aaron thought there was any reason she’d ever use it on him.

They detoured briefly to fetch Matt in his wheelchair. His bright orange cast was alarmingly and misleadingly cheery for the faux-happy halls.

Jake was awake, which was in and of itself a miracle. A morphine drip snaked into the crook of his elbow, other fluid bags and machines hooked to his fingers and chest and, essentially, anywhere else a machine could be hooked to. He was barely stable, the nurses told them, so worried as you are about your friend, don’t give him undue stress. Were they sure they didn’t have the number to his parents?

They were sure. Jake had been a close friend to Seth, Renee said. And Seth–

It’s all horrible, the nurses said. Go right ahead.

Eyes barely cracked open, Jake tracked them in silence as they filed into the cramped room. Four people standing might not have been an issue, but four people plus a wheelchair plus all of Jake’s machines was a different matter.

Machines beeped. The ventilation hummed.

Rather than Renee, who had been doing most of the talking thus far, Matt was the first to pipe up.

“You look like a mummy, man,” he said, his hands unconsciously rubbing at the top of his leg’s cast. “Lot better than when we first found you, though.”

The boy’s eyes closed for one long, drawn-out inhale. When he opened them again, the only fog left came from the morphine.

“Thanks. For everything. Whatever payment you want, name it; I can match it.”

Aaron shifted on his feet. Nicky frowned.

Matt asked, “Is that why a bunch of thugs wanted you dead?”

“Yeah,” the boy said.

“Please be honest,” Renee cut in, her voice edged in a way Aaron had never heard. “Our friends died to bring you here.”

He took another deep breath, but he replied with, “I never asked them or you to do that.”

Nicky demanded, “Are you kidding me?”

“How’d you even find me?”

“We–” Matt started, and stopped.

Tales of ghosts didn’t have much place in a building dedicated to the marvels of modern medical science. The story fizzled under flourescent lights, drowned out by a heart monitor’s steady beat.

Renee didn’t agree. “You’re lucky you’re watched over by someone who loves you. They led us to the shack you collapsed in.” She paused. The boy’s eyebrows pinched, his hand twitching as if it brought something to mind, but he looked neither comprehending nor believing. In the silence she added, “We don’t want your blood money.”

“Except to pay any hospital bills,” Nicky added, a little nervous for a supremely normal reason, “for all of us.”

“Alright,” the boy agreed, much easier. When they didn’t immediately pack up and leave, the shadow between his eyes grew and he asked, wary, “Do you want something else?”

“We’re cutting you slack because you’re crawling back from death’s door,” Andrew replied, voice drawn right to said door, “but the moment you’re out of here, <I>Jake, you’re going to tell us everything.”

The boy frowned, vague and foggy.

“When your father,” he flinched, or rather, didn’t flinch: a full-bodied lock-up that had to be painful, one none of the Foxes missed and Andrew spoke through, “David Wymack comes to take you home, it’d be better for you if you didn’t argue.”

“Is that a threat?” 

“No. It’s fact.”

“And why should I?”

Matt laughed, a breathy, disbelieving sound, his eyes huge and hands curled on his wheelchair’s arms. He seemed to struggle for words; when he couldn’t find them, Andrew continued for him.

“Would you rather go with the police?”

<I>No, said the boy’s face. <I>I’d rather not.

“You owe us an explanation, don’t you think?” Renee murmured, quieter and just as deadly. “For your life, and our friends’.”

This time, he didn’t deny it.

They appreciated that.

Silence descended once more, until Renee asked if he’d ever been camping before. 

No, he hadn’t been.

It’s awful, dude, don’t do it, Matt assured him, and then fell silent the rest for of the visit.

The rest (or, well: Nicky and Renee with occasional input from Aaron and even rarer input from Andrew) talked over and around both Matt and the largely unresponsive boy, discussing Kevin’s post-op recovery plan, bets on how long it would take for him to actually get back on the court, and in general using up their time to gauge how ‘Jake’ dealt with them not leaving.

In general, he took it decently. By the end, he’d half-dozed off.

Eventually the nurses told them they had to go, and what times they could visit next, and would one of them leave contact information? Oh, he’d told them his relative’s name and address? Fantastic - he’d refused to speak to any of them beyond the required medical answers. They’d give his father a call immediately.

“It would’ve been better,” Nicky muttered once they left the room and nurses behind, his hands on Matt’s chair’s handles, “if he wasn’t as terrified as us.”

“If he wasn’t a victim, you mean?”

“Yeah. Guess so.”

Aaron made sure to add in, “He’s still an ass.”

Nicky snorted. “Yeah, definitely.” 


End file.
